Hepburn

Fantastic view and blue skies

With the memories of soggy Spain well and truly behind us, we have had much more successful and cheaper trips down the A1 to Northumberland recently.

 I love my bouldering. I am not super strong, I often fail on problems because I have the flexibility of a plank of wood and will never achieve fame or recognition for my performances, but it is great fun! Especially on sunny days with good friends.

Hepburn was our choice of venue on both occasions. It is a very peaceful place on the moors with great views and some excellent and tricky problems. Many of the problems have obviously not seen much traffic, so be prepared to go with a brush or two, and I highly recommend you invite Emma too as she is ever so slightly obsessive about cleaning, so you can be guaranteed good clean holds.

A pretty wall and tree

Pretty flowers

Dandilion, before I blew it and made a wish

Emma on a warm up traverse

Me getting pumped on the warm up

A slightly more flattering angle of photo than the previous one

Clean me, clean me now!

Emma. OCD. Never.

What a lovely clean hold.

Trough traverse 6c

All photos by Caroline Harvey with the obvious exception of the ones of me which were taken by Emma.

Peace and quiet in the County

Ouch!

The weather forecast was looking good for Saturday, so plans were made to head to Northumberland for the second weekend in a row. Last weekend it was Bowden, this weekend we headed to it's less popular next door neighbour Ravens Crag. Emma, Andrea and I did not have any inclination for any super hard projects and it was Stuarts' first time bouldering on real rock, so it seemed the ideal choice.

On the drive down we enjoyed an 80's fest of music. Well I say we, I really mean just me and Emma, our passengers just had to put up with our choice of tunes and listen to our dodgy singing, but at least they were old enough to remember the tunes!

I was an eager beaver to get started, so decided to climb a very short problem that was basically about 3 moves with a mantle finish. Easy! I had climbed it on a previous trip the year before, so reckoned it would make the perfect warm up, and for once my hands were not blocks of ice. 

I did a little jump to get on the boulder and caught a very sharp edged pocket and pulled a huge flapper on my pinky! Bollocks, what a fool, I had not even started and was injured. Aargh! Never mind, we took the obligatory photo, I sooked away the blood, taped it up, job done. Let the climbing commence.

I am not sure of the names and grades of the problems we did, but we pulled hard and lost some skin with the sun on our backs and had a great wee day out. It is what life is all about. To top off a perfect day I visited my fabulous girlfriends for delicious home made Thai curry, red wine, a gossip and a laugh. Happy days.

Ooh lovely blood.

So as not to feel left out Emma scraped her ankle.

Ringo had a nice day too.

Andrea. Strong as ever.

Emma. Slab fear.

Me.

All photographs by Caroline Harvey (except for the ones with me in which were taken by Emma)